Quick Christmas Thoughts

Why does Christmas start so much earlier in Australia than in Italy? It seems to me that the shops are advertising and decorating in mid October back home. The television is already seeing the first festive season commercial impact before the end of September. Shopping centres and elevators (damn American English invading my brain, I mean lifts) are piping out cheesy Christmas carols for months on end. Christmas parties are scheduled from the beginning of November and some of us talk about finishing the Christmas shopping and posting Christmas cards well before December dawns.

In contrast, here in Italy, well at least Naples, Christmas officially kicked off on the 8th December. Why the 8th? Check your calendar of saints and Catholic religious events and you’ll find that’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. (Does that mean that the Virgin Mary was only pregnant for 13 days if Jesus was born on the 25th?) December 8 is traditionally the day when Italians put up the Christmas tree and recognise the start of the festive season. Accordingly, shops start to decorate their windows and the Christmas markets scattered around the city come into force. All of a sudden, the streets are full of people madly out shopping for gifts (more so than the usual year round culture of consumerism that has recently replaced Catholicism in Italy). I’ve seen a couple of pitiable Santa Claus in the main street in Naples. However, it’s nothing like the meandering queues at Myers where children and parents line up for hours to secure a photo on Santa’s lap in Australia.

I miss the feeling of Christmas in Brisbane. I miss walking out of the sweltering summer heat into a refreshingly cool shopping centre. The decorations at home seem to be more sophisticated, the Christmas parties more merry and the steady flow of Christmas cards a reminder of friends and family you may not have heard from since last Christmas.

Neapolitans don’t give Christmas cards; in fact, I’ve found it difficult to buy any to send to those at home who aren’t on my emailing list. But they do like their gifts wrapped by someone else, usually queuing unusually patiently at the gift wrapping table set up temporarily in most shops. A young girl stands by a cluttered pile of gift-wrap and cheap ribbon, bored and haughty that she has been given such a lowly task. Similarly, the shop assistants become increasingly short tempered as Christmas approaches, as their work hours are stretched out and more shoppers arrive to disturb their carefully arranged displays of sweaters, boxed perfumes, stuffed toys or women’s lingerie.

I miss hearing mum’s updates about the progress of her Christmas plans. Cards done and posted? Tick. Christmas cake fruit soaking? Tick. Christmas cakes baked? Tick (yours will be waiting for you when you get home Jenny, I was recently told!) Christmas tree up, decorated and lights blinking in the evening or when the grandkids visit? Tick. Christmas lunch menu decided (traditional hot lunch of roast turkey and trimmings, or cool seafood and salad buffet)? Tick. Gift buying finished? Tick. Christmas parties attended, enjoyed or endured? Tick.

Christmas smells differently in Naples. Hot roasting chestnuts, a favourite of every Neapolitan I know, but something I find tastes of not much at all, wafts along the street. The bars start to have hot chocolate available as a matter of course. The fish vendors are busy as ever, the pungent salty odour mixing with the decidedly horrendous blue exhaust fumes from scooters that badly need servicing.

It’s been unseasonably cold leading up to Christmas the year. The cold weather is somehow something that feels quite normal for the festive season, despite the fact that the majority of my Christmases have been spent in hot, humid places wishing for a swimming pool or air conditioning. Years of Christmas images of snow, reindeers, carols around a roaring fire and European landscapes have made Christmas and winter a normal reality in a part of my brain. Ironically, Neapolitans find it almost impossible to imagine a hot Christmas, where the Santa dresses in board shorts and you might just spend part of the day at the beach.

All of that said and done though and back to my original thought about how llllooonnnggg Christmas seems to go for in Australia, compared to the much shorter period dedicated to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in Naples…..I can’t help feeling that shorter is better. If 60 odd million Italians can get together in 13 days why are we 20 million Australians inflicted with weeks and weeks of it?

Merry Christmas!